The skinmap and morph combination are called Yannis -- and it's a rare treat. Very, very seldom do I use a face morph "off the peg," or from another designer, but this one is inspired! And it comes with more options than you can shake a pistol at. Ive only played around with some of them this afternoon, because -- well, as much as I'd like to muck about playing pirates happily for hours, I had, and still have, work to do!
The skinmap comes in a number of basic options: nice and clean and paler skinned; or tanned and dirty; with tattoos on or off. Having said that, there are also beard options and scalp options -- and options for the teeth! Not to mention the eyes, and the "guy-liner" eye makeup, which is also known as kohl, people, and guys have been wearing it for about five thousand years, east of Suez.
The hair I've used on Cap'n Yannis (and I'll just bet his first nae is Jack), is the Spartakos hair from the said design shop -- StudioArtVartanian. I also bought the full-on Rasta dreadlock hairdo with the bandanna, and I did install it, but I was hunting high and low for it among my DAZ folders, and can't yet find it. I think I might have copied something in the wrong place -- my fault, folks. But since I was running out of time, I reverted to the Spartakos hair, which is a very nice solution.
The costume here is a mix of Lockwood and Journeyer Scout; the buildings in the background are just a few of the Tortuga props from Renderosity (I think it's ADS Tortuga), and the sky/ocean backdrop is a Bryce render I did a long, long time ago.
The sheer range of options you get with Yannis makes this a very, very attractive character. There's even a young version and an old version. This is the "old" version, though "old" is a relative term! It's going to be fun putting on the dreadlocks, when I work out what the heck I did with them in the installation ... and it'll also be fun trying other hair and costumes.
The only tiny grumble I could find -- and it's not actually even a grumble, just an observation! -- is that the full tan-and-dirt skinmap, which actually looks the best from a distance, gets a little bit "noisy" in extreme closeup -- noise, as in colour breakup, or color flash, as we used to call it way back when. I should think this can be eradicated with the use of lights and some adjustments in the surfaces tab -- also, it's well worth mentioning that I work in DAZ, and Yannis was designed and intended for Poser (most of the really great stuff is), so it's only to be expected that some adjustments will need to be made. I simply need to work out what they are, and then remember to write it down, so that I can still figure ot what I'm doing next month!
The big difference, at least to me, in the way Poser and DAZ work is in the way they handle textures, surfaces, shaders. DAZ is quite a bit different, and you can get big departures from what you expect, when using models and materials which were designed for, and intended to be used in, Poser. But if you're clever with what you're doing, you can still end up with very similar results ... and I'll be honest here. The price of DAZ is right. I mean, like, free. Poser costs a packet -- and if I were going anywhere beyond DAZ, it would be into Cararra!
And this is well worth seeing at 1:1 size:
Now, let me see if I can find out where I put those damned dreadlocks...
Jade, May 28
